Minimized windows disappear, help please!

[Steve Jernigan <jernigan chester uccs edu>]

Hi All!

Running Fedora/Gnome on my notebook successfully for the last year or more, 
until last week. Now when I minimize a window, rather than showing up on the 
panel, it just disappears into the lower right hand corner of the screen. The 
app is still running, but I haven't been able to find a way to get the 
window(s) back. When I log out, all of the lost windows come back for a 
second just before Xwindows (?) shuts down. This seemed to start after a 
application running under WINE crashed after filling up a file system, but 
I'm not 100% sure.
The installed OS is, I believe, the original Fedora release, but I run 
up-to-date fairly regularly (last time perhaps a month ago).
While I am not a Linux newbie, I am, by no means a guru either, and as such am 
hoping someone can suggest a fix, or at least point me in the right direction 
to start looking. I have looked thru the system logs without finding anything 
that looked related, the panel functionality seems normal; the usual icons 
and applets are present, and work as advertised. The only thing I have 
noticed is that the work-place switcher is gone. I can move between 
workplaces using the hot-key combination; the missing windows aren't on 
another work-place either.
I have switched to the KDE desktop until I can get GNOME fixed; if nothing 
else I will try the old Windoze trick; fdisk, setup.exe, but that's a last 
resort.
Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated. TIA!

ByeBye! S.

-- 
Steve Jernigan  KG0MB
Laboratory Manager
Microelectronics Research
University of Colorado
(719) 262-3101